Julia Velkova: "Throwaway Infrastructure: Dismantling Communication Networks and the Cultural Politics of Making Technology Endings"

ABSTRACT:

Communication infrastructures have long defined what it means to live “in the times.” Networks of wires, people, and physical installations that enable the transmission of media and messages have been central to the production of power, connection, citizenship, and everyday life, from the times of the Roman Empire to the present “AI” hype. Today, many such networks are declared “old” and placed on a trajectory of decommissioning as part of projects to make digital infrastructure futures. Copper cable lines spanning Europe and North America are being switched off. Mobile networks underpinning “the internet of things” are following suit.

In this talk I explore the ongoing dismantling of Sweden’s terrestrial copper cable network for telephony and internet as an entry point for discussing how institutions, corporations, and citizens reset infrastructure time and bring nationwide communication networks to an end. I focus on the labor of pacing, knowing, narrating, caring for, and revaluing network endings and foreground the politics of power and valuation through which enduring networks are made into disposable objects. Ultimately, I ask what role scholars could or should play in these ongoing transformations.